


Step

by LordStarling



Series: 'Scare Me' Stories [2]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:53:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordStarling/pseuds/LordStarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short horror story for the 'scare me' challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step

Excerpt taken from interior cavern wall, discovered 1998. Carbon Dating places origin timeframe of around 2 Ma, around first appearance of Homo Habilis. Quoted by many to be ‘Too obscure to be anything but the truth.’ Not to be removed from the institute for any reason, scientific study or no. 

Individual in question is currently believed to be Warren Moreau, who disappeared in 2026.

I once knew a time traveler, who went by the name of Peter.

My timeline has always been ‘fixed’ as much as possible for any one person. Although subject to change, we all must step our way through a limited set of opportunities laid out for us by the numerous occurrences of whichever past reality our life stemmed from.

Not so for Peter.

To the casual observer, there was nothing special about my friend. You’d expect someone who moved through time on a regular basis to have something unique to them, a knowledge of what was to come. A wisdom about the inner workings of dimensional travel. Maybe a couple of gadgets from the coming years. But Pete was about as ordinary as you could get. No exciting or reckless, a sensible head on his shoulders, prone to showing off, but only to an extent.

Only he could Step.

That was what he called it, moving around in time. A step, hop and a leap. One step sideways, a hop back or forward, and a leap back into reality.

He never went far, old Pete. Never gave away a thing about my future neither, not that I wanted to know, but sometimes when he thought I weren’t lookin’ he would give me the saddest eyes. I think by the time we was 21, just starting out for ourselves he had already seen me die. I let him think I didn’t know.

He had grown up in my time, at my school as a kid. My friend. He lived a long time ago though. Didn’t like the modern world, so he took a couple of steps back and set up building advanced machinery in the 1800’s or sommat, and I can’t tell you anything more specific because the only time I asked he was real vague about it. He visited sometimes and it was on one of the visits that I got curious about the man I knew so well, but knew so little about.

“What do you do, back then?” I ask.

“I make things.”

“What kind?”

“It’s a secret. But I’m working on something big.”

“Will it still be ‘round today?” 

“Maybe.” He laughed then, like he had a joke I didn’t know about. “Listen and you might hear it around.

I never knew what he meant by that.

You can imagine I was surprised one day when a young Peter comes bustin’ through the door while I’m doing dishes. 

“Warren!” He says. “I’ve got it!”

And he explains to me how he’s figured out what he does, that this blue stuff he was infected with as a baby made him able to step, how he’s figured out how to give the ability to someone else and he wants me to go with him.

“How old are you, 19?” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

He says to me that that’s impossible, that me before this moment wasn’t able to time travel and therefore it was impossible to make me before now able to time travel. Tricky stuff.

He feeds me this blue stuff after that.

The problem though, was that he didn’t factor in what I said before. Most of us have set points in out lives what we can’t step out of. I want to see what he’s been making all these years. He says that means running into another version of himself, a future version he don’t know about. He doesn’t even know if there can be two of him in the same timeframe. We give it a go anyway.

But when we get the we see what he’s done.

And little Pete, he’s shocked, but he doesn’t seem to care. To him it’s a scientific breakthrough. Me though, I’m angry. My own daughter, just left home back in the future, dead, here in the past. Grown sick and wasted away while my ‘friend’ turns his mind to other things.

He’s older than me here.

I’m hurting inside, a pain in my head. I can’t see. Can’t think. Blue waves outline everything, and I can feel the stuff he fed me taking hold.

While the young Peter pores over the notes lining the wall, the old one talks. Only I don’t hear him. My ears are too clouded, and although it looks like he’s trying to explain this rage that builds up in me is too much.

I push him.

He falls. Right onto his machine.

And it’s bloody and it’s Violent and I regret it immediately. I guess all those old timey cogs and gears were discontinued for a reason. I’m sick to my stomach.

Little Peter turns. I open My mouth to say I’m sorry, and blue drips out.

Before either of us can say a word, I’m gone. My last step pulls me back so far the very air tastes different, not that the air inside of a cave tastes much like air anyway.

I’ve wandered for hours now, but I can feel the poisonous blue taking hold. I don’t think I’m going to make it.

My cell phone is rapidly running out of batteries. The light on this wall is blue like the stuff that’s killing me.

I wonder if anybody will ever find this. 

I said before, Peter always looked at me with the saddest eyes. I always knew he’d see the last of me. Always wondered why he remained my friend.

I never thought he’d have to live with knowing I’d kill him.


End file.
